Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Rage Marketing: Monetizing The Fury

Episode Date: January 31, 2026

This week, we look at “Rage Marketing.”Where a company or organization intentionally provokes the public to get angry. And hopefully spend money.We’ll look at the American Eagle/Sydney Sweeney controversy.We’ll talk about an actress who faked her own death to make a point.And how Connecticut made New Yorkers furious when it said it makes the best pizza in the country.We know you want to listen to all the ads in this show. On the off-chance you don’t, subscribe ad-free here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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That's a spicy meatball. What love doesn't conquer. Al-Caseltzer will. What a relief. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. The Oxford University Press has chosen a word of the year since 2004. The word of the year is based on usage evidence drawn from its continually updated collection of 30 billion words. Those 30 billion words are compiled from news sources across the English-speaking world.

The goal was to identify a word or phrase that captures the defining theme or mood of the past year. demonstrating how new or emerging language has shaped our conversations and reflected cultural shifts. Over the past few years, the winner is chosen by Oxford's Committee, and 30,000 members of the public are also invited to vote. Back in 2005, the word of the year was, podcast. Language from social media began to enter into short lists in 2008. That year, the winner was the word tweet. Then in 2009, the winner was unfriend,

which of course meant to remove someone as a friend on social networking sites. In 2013, the word of the year was selfie, which had grown in usage by 17,000% over the previous year. In 2015, the word of the year was actually an emoji. Not the word emoji, but an actual emoji. It was the laughing-crying emoji. It made up 20% of all emojis used in the English-speaking world that year. Politics has played a big role in selecting the word of the year.

In 2016, the winner was post-truth, reflecting how emotions and personal beliefs had a bigger influence on elections than facts did. Climate change influenced the world. word of the year in 2019, with the phrase climate emergency being crowned. During the pandemic, the word of the year was Vax. Then, in 2022, the winner was Goblin Mode, which seemed to capture the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to normal life after the pandemic. And in 2024, the winner was brain rot. which implies the deterioration of mental capacities brought on

by the overconsumption of trivial online content. Which brings us to the latest word of the year. The Oxford University Press has chosen the phrase, rage bait. Rage bait was defined as, online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive. Apparently, the usage of the phrase rage bait goes back at least as far as 2002,

but according to Oxford, the usage of the term rage bait has tripled over the past year. The president of Oxford languages said in an interview that, even if people never heard the term rage bait before, they instantly know what it means and they want to talk about it, even if it makes them angry. world of marketing is always a mirror of society at any given moment. So it shouldn't surprise you that rage marketing is a hot tactic right now. Advertising campaigns are being designed to provoke you and get you all steamed up. Sometimes the anger at fuels is designed to shed light on a low-interest

subject, and most times, rage marketing is used purely to fuel outrage and press coverage. You're under the influence. Last year, American Eagle ran a contentious advertising campaign for a line of jeans featuring actress Sidney Sweeney. When the campaign was revealed, huge 3D billboards appeared in Times Square, showing Sidney-Lying on a floor with the line, Sidney Sweeney has great genes. But there was also this video that appeared on American Eagles' Facebook page. Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even I color.

My jeans are blue. Sidney Sweeney has great jeans. The billboard line, Sidney-S-R-Geney has great jeans, was a pun. Jeans was spelled J-E-A-N-S, as in the jeans she was wearing, but it was playing off the homophone jeans spelled G-E-N-E-S. And if there was any question about that, the video cleared up any confusion. And that fueled the outrage.

In order for a pun to work, a person must first process both the obvious expected meaning of a word, along with the secondary surprising interpretation. Critics instantly saw the double wordplay as a nod to eugenics, a discredited theory that held humanity could be improved through selective breeding for certain traits, that some groups of people have good genes and others have bad genes and are therefore unfit members of society. One editorial said the pun only lands because Sidney Sweeney fits the long, upheld American ideal of beauty, blonde, feminine, thin, attractive, symmetrical, and white. The outrage began on X.

then exploded to all other social media. News outlets picked up on it. A national controversy ensued. Then the White House waited in. On truth social, President Trump posted, quote, Sidney, a registered Republican, has the hottest, all caps, ad out there.

It's for American Eagle and the jeans are flying off the shelves. Go get them, Sydney. The White House Communications Manager called the backlash a prime example of cancel culture run amok the result of warped, moronic, dense, liberal thinking. American Eagle responded to the outcry saying it is and always was about the genes, her genes, her story.

We'll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their American Eagle jeans with confidence their way. Great jeans look good on everyone. Sidney Sweeney herself was quiet for a long time. Eventually, she made a comment saying it was just a jeans ad, that she lived in jeans and that the reaction surprised her but didn't affect her. GQ magazine published an interview with Sweeney not long after and prefaced that interview by saying it became clear that the ad campaign contained

a message straight out of the lab where they cook up culture war pathogens. The reason it fueled so much outrage is context. Ice raids, the elimination of DEI policies, and immigration are contentious topics right now, and those issues are a line in the sand. And any advertising campaign that dares to touch on race and beauty standards is bound to set people off. So, can divisiveness drive results? American Eagles says it saw a 10% right. in sales after the campaign was launched.

The day after the Trump endorsement, American Eagle's stock jumped 23.65%. During the controversy, American Eagle's stock rose a total of 38%. The company beat Wall Street estimates in its second quarter. American Eagles had all Sydney-Sweeney-branded jeans sold out within a week.

And all revenue from a limited edition gene called the Sydney gene was donated to a U.S. charity hotline for people who need mental health support. Amid the controversy, American Eagle released another video showing a billboard that said, Sidney Sweeney has great genes, spelled G-E-N-E-N-S. Then, a blonde girl, who we only see from the back, but who resembles Sweeney, crosses out the word genes and replaces it with J-E-A-N-S. So did American Eagle know it was creating rage marketing?

Before the campaign was launched, the American Eagle chief marketing officer told advertising trade outlets that the upcoming Sweeney ads included clever, even provocative language that was definitely going to press buttons. According to Reuters, American Eagles' vice president of marketing said that on a Zoom call with Sweeney, as the campaign was being developed, company executives asked her, quote,

How far do you want to push it? Without hesitation, she smirked and said, Let's push it, I'm game. American Eagles' response? Challenge accepted. The CEO of American Eagle said the goal was to convert the buzz into business. Sometimes,

a marketer unintentionally creates an ad that results in rage-baiting. In August of 2025, Swiss watchmaker Swatch released a new ad. It featured a model pulling the corners of his eyes back, then up. A gesture widely interpreted as racist and disrespectful of Asian people. A backlash started immediately. The, quote, slanted-eyed gesture was labeled deliberate discrimination. It created outrage across Asian social media. People condemned the ad, calling for immediate boycotts and punishment by regulators.

But that move by Swatch didn't quite make sense. First, the model in the ad was Asian, not Caucasian. Next, Swatch typically gets 27% of its revenue from China, Hong Kong, and Macau. So, Asia is incredibly important to the watchmaker. On top of that, revenue was slumping. In 2024, revenue for Swatch fell 14.6% in China. In July of 2025, Swatch reported an 11.2% drop in net sales for the first six months of the year, saying the slump was exclusively attributable to sluggish demand in China.

Swatch needed to stoke sales in China. So why mock Asians with an ad? When the backlash went viral, Swatch immediately reacted on Instagram and Chinese social media sites, acknowledging the concerns regarding the model in the ad and deleted the promotional material worldwide, saying, we sincerely apologize for any distress and misunderstanding this may have caused. Interestingly, Swatch went on to say that it was a faux pa by a young motivated team who were not aware of the extent of the gestures. At no time was it the intention to offend or hurt anyone with the pictures.

According to reports, the apology did little to appease critics. When the Asian public was interviewed on the street about the offending ad, some said the ad must have been done by foreigners who don't understand or respect Asians. Some wondered why the Asian model himself didn't flag the gesture as, offensive. The apology was issued on the weekend, and by Monday, Swatch's stock price fell as much as 4%. According to news reports, this incident was the latest setback for Swatch, whose shares have fallen by more than half since 2023. It doesn't make sense that Swatch would mock the Asian market when it needed the Asian market, especially since it was already having troubles. Back in September of

2021, Swatch was removed from the Blue Chip Swiss Market Index. Then in November of 2025, it was announced that Swatch was to be removed the following month from the benchmark Swiss Leader Index, after a decline in the Swiss watchmaker's capitalization and lower trading volumes in its shares. And with Asia accounting for more than a quarter of its revenues, it's mystifying how an offensive gesture could slip through the approval process. All advertising, especially ads that are being used on a worldwide basis, go through many approval levels. It remains a mystery.

Swatch now says the slip-up didn't create a crisis and its business as usual. The real crisis, a Swatch spokesperson said, was the 39% tariffs Trump has leveled on Swiss watchmaker. When we come back, a death enrages the public. If you're enjoying this episode, you might also like The Risk in the Asterisk, Fine Print and Advertising Disclaimers, where we talk funny fine print, like, do not iron clothes while wearing them. Season 8, episode 23, you'll find the episode on your favorite podcast app. On February 2nd, 2024, a message was posted onto the Instagram account of a famous actor in India.

Her name was Poonam Pandi. The post said the 32-year-old actor had died of cervical cancer and asked for privacy for the family at this time. News of the death dominated the headlines. Pandi's passing and the topic of cervical cancer trended all over the internet. People around the world began mourning her passing, and social media was full of tributes. Then the next day, a startling video appeared. I'm alive. I didn't die because of cervical cancer. Unfortunately, I cannot say that about those hundreds and thousands of women who have lost their lives because of cervical cancer.

It is not because they couldn't do anything about it because they had no idea. what to do now. I'm here to tell you that, unlike other cancers, cervical cancer is preventable. Poonam Pandy was, in fact, alive and well. It was all a stunt to raise awareness of cervical cancer. At first, the public was in shock and did know how to react to the news.

Then, the outrage and backlash set in. People took to social media to call the stunt ridiculous, in bad taste, and disgusting. At this point, the digital advertising agency behind the stunt, called Shabang, issued a statement. It said, to start off, we would like to extend a heartfelt apology, especially towards those who have been triggered as a result of having faced or having a loved one face the hardships of any kind of cancer. Our actions were driven by a singular mission, to elevate awareness about

cervical cancer. Shabang said cervical cancer was the second most frequent cancer affecting Indian women. The agency went on to say that cervical cancer became one of the most searched terms on Google as a result of the stunt and pointed out that India's financial minister had mentioned funding for cervical cancer vaccines the day before, but it got no headlines. Conversely, for the first time in the country's history, cervical cancer attracted over 1,000 headlines. Still, people were outraged, feeling the apology felt more like a justification

than a genuine expression of regret. Then, Chebang began to lose clients, including a huge pharmaceutical account. That prompted Shebang to take the initial apology down and issue another statement which read, We made a mistake, not once, but twice. To everyone, though, hurt or not hurt by the campaign to our staff, partners, friends, families, and the young

talent reconsidering their career choice to be in advertising, we are deeply sorry. We know the end doesn't justify the means. If there's one thing we know, it's this. Something like this will never happen again. While a small group of people praised the stunt for elevating the topic of cervical cancer, most criticized it for being insensitive, saying death was not a joke. The press was also criticized for not fact-checking the story. Interestingly, the more cervical cancer dominated the news, which was the goal, the more the controversy deepened.

Pandy herself doubled down with an Instagram post saying, Kill me, crucify me, hate me, but save someone you love. A $12 million lawsuit was brought against Pandy for, fabricating a false conspiracy of death, and for orchestrating a death hoax to toy with people's emotions betraying the trust of millions. The rage just wouldn't go away. The entire Sega raised an interesting question.

There is no doubt the stunt raised the awareness of cervical cancer to historic levels, but is it acceptable for effectiveness to trump ethics? When we come back, state of Connecticut enrages the state of New York. In June of 2025, the Connecticut Tourism Office decided to use a little rage marketing. But unlike the cervical cancer story, it wasn't life or death. Or was it? The state of Connecticut posted a huge billboard in Times Square.

The billboard said, Connecticut has the nation's best pizza, not you, New York. Well, them's were fighting. words, and it didn't end there. Connecticut modified its highway signs at the New York borders that said, welcome to Connecticut, home of the pizza capital of the United States. More billboards were put up in New York City that said, there's no shame in second place. New York was outraged. The chief marketing officer for Connecticut admitted New York made good pizza, but it isn't the nation's best. He said that title belongs to us. The campaign also invited people to call up a

hotline or visit the Better PizzaNCT.com website to weigh in. Most of the calls from New York were littered with so much profanity they couldn't be aired, which was actually funny. You've reached Connecticut, home of the pizza capital of the U.S. If you're calling to agree, welcome. If you're calling to argue, leave a tasty message. Otherwise, admit defeat. After the beep. Connecticut Pizza takes the win? In what fucking world?

You, Connecticut? One appalled New Yorker called Connecticut Pizza, just hot bread with ambition. Another said, What the hell is a Connecticut pizza? Even Stephen Colbert got in on the action. Come off at Connecticut. This is a little thirsty.

You have zero cuisine of your own, so you who sit right next to New York and New Jersey are trying to steal pizza as your official food? Why? Because you have one town that makes good pizza? Stay in your lane. Even the mayor of New York made a statement saying there are 8.5 million New Yorkers with about 35 million opinions, but one thing we can all agree on is that Connecticut pizza

could never compare to an iconic and, NYC slice. Go back home with your pizza, Connecticut tourism. The marketing goal was to get more tourists to Connecticut by driving media coverage in online chatter. But there was a secondary strategy to increase state pride. As for using rage marketing, the Connecticut chief marketing officer said, we know what we're doing. This isn't about being subtle. We're telling the world we're the best, and we invite the world to experience it for themselves. And it wasn't the first time Connecticut has been thinking outside the pizza box.

In 2021, state legislators proposed a bill to make pizza the official state food of Connecticut. In 2024, U.S. State Representative Rosa DeLauro took an entourage of pizza chefs and media to Washington to celebrate her reading a statement into the congressional record on the House floor, declaring Connecticut, the pizza capital of the United States. As it turned out, the 2025 pizza campaign moved the needle in measurable ways. Day trips from NYC to New Haven, Connecticut rose 22% year over year. Overnight NYC to New Haven stays were up 12%. Pizza-related content on the Visit Connecticut website jumped 50%.

And the state has created a curated tour of Connecticut's most beloved pizzerias called Connecticut Pizza Trail. The state had spent $220,000 on the pizza campaign, but ended up with $13 million worth of exposure. Where Connecticut was once a drive-through state, it was now becoming a drive-tri-trial state. state. The campaign didn't just go viral, it went visceral. And that rage sparked a very effective food fight. It's an interesting time in the marketing world. Traditional brand building no longer guarantees awareness and increased revenues. And shoppers with tight budgets and short attention spans have prompted companies to approve riskier ads. When a brand dares to touch the third rail and court controversy, it hopes the white-hot glare of the spotlight will lead to millions

of dollars of free press. And that free press can sometimes lead to millions of dollars in sales revenue. But it's always a risk. American Eagle and the cervical cancer stunt in India both strained the answer to the question, does effectiveness trump ethics? There's another question, is visibility a metric of success? Sudden awareness generated by offensive content does not guarantee sales, and it can extend a long shadow over a brand that it can't shake. We're also living in an era where it's getting harder and harder to shock the public. We're now comfortably numb.

So the shock stakes get higher and riskier. Maybe Connecticut has it right. It uses rage marketing in a humorous way, then just monetized the fury when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terstream Mobile Recording Studio, producer Debbie O'Reilly,

chief sound engineer Jeff Devine, research, Alison Pinch's. Theme music by Casey Pick, Jeremiah Pick, and James Aiton. Tunes provided by APM music. Follow me at Terry O Influence. This podcast is powered by ACAST. Terry's top slogans of all time. Number 19.

Fluke transport trucks. If it's on time, it's a fluke. See you next week.